The Masked Man: A Memoir And Fantasy Of Hollywood

by Tom Wilson

  "Ginny, come on, get the camera out!" the man said, "Hey, Lone Ranger!"

  The Ranger took a couple of steps away from the group and turned around to face us. "Folks, may I ask you a question?"

  Ginny and her husband looked at me.

  "Is this a T.V. show?" Ginny asked.

  "All of us?" I asked, "You want to ask us a question?"

  "Just a simple question," he said.

  "Do we win a prize?" the man said, scratching the stubble on his chin.

  "Was Roy Rogers Roy Rogers?" the Ranger asked.

  "Trick question!" Ginny said, "Don't say nothing."

  After a few seconds of silence, the guy said "Sure he was. Who else was he supposed to be, Tonto? heh…"

  "No, he wasn't" the Ranger said.

  The guy coughed and looked at me. "What do you mean he wasn't?"

  "Do we not win? Shoot," Ginny said.

  "He was, and he wasn't," the Ranger said, "He wasn't really Roy Rogers, he was Leonard Slye."

  Ginny coughed a few times and mumbled "The hell you say."

  The Ranger winced slightly and went on. "Leonard Slye. A shoe salesman from Ohio. That's Roy Rogers. And it's not."

  The couple stood staring at him, hypnotized.

  "He was Roy Rogers," he said, "I knew him and I worked with him. But he was also Leonard Slye, the Ohio shoe salesman."

  Ginny's fat husband sighed in equal parts confusion and boredom.

  "Yes, folks, he was Roy Rogers, king of the cowboys as soon as he said that's who he was. It's America. Nobody disagreed with him."

  "See?" I chimed in, "He's the One Ranger if he says he is! It's America! You're going to tell him he's not?"

  "I am the One Ranger," he said, hands on his hips.

  "But you have that mask," Ginny said.

  "The One Ranger wears a mask, too."

  "Fine. Can we take a picture with you?"

  "Did you ever see the movie Back To The Future?"

  "No."

  "This man here starred in those movies!"

  "You did?" the guy said, turning to me, "We saw that one, Ginny, the one with Michael J. Fox!"

  "Who's that now?"

  "You know, the one from that T.V. show with Alzhammers."

  "Oh, that poor man," Ginny said, "My son in law has an anointing of the Lord for people with Alzhammers."

  "He has Parkinson's disease." I said, "It's not Alz--"

  "Anyway," the Ranger said, "We're on our way back to Hollywood to make this fellow a star!"

  Ginny coughed an emphysema growl and grabbed my arm. "Would you take our picture with him?"

  "Smile!" I said, reaching for the camera hanging around her neck.

  We walked past endless dioramas of things pulled out of a cowboy's garage, with index cards leaning against them.

  "SOME OF THE WATCHES THAT HAVE KEPT ME ON TIME FOR FIFTY YEARS," read one of them, on a pile of wristwatches pulled from the drawer next to Roy's bed.

  "He's got a bunch of wristwatches over here," I called through the glass cases, yawning, "Museum quality wristwatches. Timex, Seiko, Rolex, whatever."

  "What's wrong with that?" the Ranger said.

  "Nothing, I guess. Maybe he ran out of dead pets to stuff."

  "Roy was a stickler for time, though."

  "You knew Roy Rogers for real?" I asked.

  "I told you that. Of course I know him, I played the heavy in plenty of serials."

  The Ranger leaned so close he almost touched the glass with his mask, his eyes gleaming as he read a letter from President Eisenhower resting behind a pair of bongo drums.

  I turned around and almost knocked over Ginny's husband, who was trying to look at whatever the Ranger was looking at to make conversation.

  "They have Trigger in here, right?" I asked.

  He pointed toward a hallway in the back.

  "Over thataway," he said, "You want me to take your picture with it?"

  The Ranger walked in front of me, slowly taking in glittering cowboy shirts and tables and chairs actually used at Roy and Dale's house, and turned the corner, stopping still in the entryway to the next room.

  "My goodness," he whispered, "That's a sight."

  There was mighty Trigger himself, mounted upright and rearing on his hind legs in frozen triumph, wearing a black saddle with glittering rows of silver studs. "Buttermilk," Dale Evans' horse stands to Trigger's right, motionless, demure, and immobile for decades.

  "A beautiful animal, Trigger," the Ranger said, walking toward the glass display.

  "And don't forget Buttermilk!" I said, waving at Dale's smaller horse, it's creamy skin stretched over a horse shaped armature.

  "He stuffed about everything, didn't he?" I asked, ducking under the heads of elk, buffalo, and moose he'd hunted.

  "Mounted," the Ranger said, "Not stuffed."

  To the side of the display, near a horse drawn wagon behind Trigger's body, there was a small door for employees that led behind the glass wall, and the Ranger walked toward it.

  "What's the difference?" I asked, "Mounted or stuffed?"

  He felt it for a moment to see how it opened, gave it a push and walked into the display.

  "No!" I hissed, "Get back out here!!"

  Stepping over a few wagon wheels and horseshoes scattered on the rough floor, he tiptoed his way past Buttermilk to Trigger.

  "Look at him," he said, muffled behind the glass, his eyes ice blue in the fluorescent light, glimmering with emotion.

  "Hey, you can't be in there!" I said, "Get out here!!"

  He ignored me, running his hand across a black stirrup while whistling under his breath.

  "What a beautiful animal," the Ranger said.

  "Ranger, knock it off."

  "Not many know what that's like," he said, looking at me through the glass, "Riding a fast horse under a blue sky."

  "You can't be in there, people are coming!"

  "I would have paid them to do it."

  "Get out here!" I said, knocking on the glass quietly, "Is this what you wanted to show me? How to get arrested?"

  He shook his head "no" and walked around a few antelope heads to a German Shepherd dog, mounted and sitting silently near the horses.

  "Bullet?" I asked, reading the small name card leaning on its paws.

  "Roy's dog," the Ranger said, smiling into the glass eyes.

  "He stuffed his dog?"

  "Yes, it looks like he stuffed his dog," The Ranger said, grinning from ear to ear, "I guess he loved him."

  He reached his hand down and felt the dog's upright ear, running his fingers down his snout and across his head. Smiling, he took his other hand and ran it down the dog's back, rubbing the pelt and scratching behind his ears. And he began to laugh, and laugh harder, as the dog turned its head and looked at him, opening its mouth to let out a pink wet tongue and breathe. The sparkling glass eyes lost false glimmer as they gained real sight, and Bullet, Roy Rogers' dog, jumped onto the Ranger's legs, happy and alive.

  The Ranger patted the dog, and the dog smelled him, and ran around the display, smelling animal heads and wagging his tail.

  "Tom," the Ranger said, "Give him something to eat! Do you have anything?"

  I shook my head no, unable to make words. But I heard sounds coming from around the corner, and waved my hands wildly.

  "Noooo!! You …nooo!!!" I choked, unsure of what I even meant to tell him anymore. Kill the dog? Get out of there? There was no time, and the tourists were turning the corner.

  "He was a good actor, but a great singer," a man in a western snap-front shirt said to what looked like his family - a woman in stretch pants and a flowery blouse, and two grandchildren straggling behind, "Oh, now look at this."

  The Ranger stood between the two horses, frozen statue-still, his eyes unfocussed toward the horizon.

  "Trigger, that's Trigger there," the man said, "And Dale's horse right there."

  "Is that Buttercup?" the lady asked.

  "Buttermilk," the man sa
id, "That's what the sign says."

  I searched the corners of the room for a fire alarm to pull and found nothing. The Ranger stood still as they finally found him in the clutter.

  "What's that there?" the woman said.

  "That's a man," one of the kids said.

  "It's the One Ranger," I managed, "He's stuffed."

  "They stuffed a man?!" the woman gasped.

  "No, not stuffed, I mean he's fake! The One Ranger. He's a fake one. Hey, did you see that Jeep they've got out front?"

  "There's a dog in there!" the kid said, "A real dog!"

  Bullet was sniffing the bottom of the glass display from inside, snorting clouds of steam from his wet nose.

  "Probably a watch dog," the man said, "to keep people out of there. Good idea nowadays."

  Bullet went back to the Ranger, burying his nose in the light blue crotch of the Ranger's pressed pants and sniffing, and the Ranger had no choice, suddenly coming to life and heading for the door.

  "What the heck is this now?" the man said.

  The woman thought it was an 'animatronic' moving doll for a second, and then she realized he was alive and screamed at the top of her lungs.

  "Pardon me, folks," the Ranger said, pulling open the door and walking by quickly, "We have to be moving on."

  I could only nod and move toward the exit.

  "Come on, Bullet!" he said, and the dog bounded out of the display, clicking his claws on the floor.

  "We can't take the dog!" I said.

  "We have to!"

  "We don't have to! He can't come with us!"

  "We can't just kill him and prop him against the wagon!' he shouted, "We have to take him! Let's go!"

  We walked right out of the place, past Roy's spangly shirts and telephones, wristwatches and bongo drums, past the admission window, waving good-bye with a living, barking German Shepherd following us.

  "Can I take a picture with the watch dog?" Ginny called out as we got to the sizzling parking lot.

  "Get in the car!" I yelled at him, trying to wave my arms at the dog so he might wander back inside.

  "That was really something, wasn't it?"

  "Yeah, dead animals except for one, and shirts. Get in."

  "You mean to tell me that those horses in there are just dead animals?" he said, "Trigger in there is American history, my friend."

  "Okay, Trigger is worth seeing, but a stuffed German Shepherd? What is that?"

  "Hey, to each his own," the Ranger said, "Ginny liked the shirts!"

  "But the dog!! Why?!! What are you doing?"

  He laughed, clapped his hands at the dog, who came to him in a flash, and said "Life!"

  "Get in the car!"

  "Life!" he said, as Bullet wrestled between his legs.

  "I don't know what you mean. The dog is alive, so…"

  "Yes!" he said, laughing, "The dog is alive."

  "Uhh…I don't understand."

  "You don't have to! Life is beautiful, isn't it?"

  Then he laughed harder and got in the car with the dog.

  We got Bullet a drive-through cheeseburger and hit the road, racing toward the lights of L.A. across the desert at sunset.

  "It's so unrelenting" I said.

  "What do you mean?" the Ranger said.

  "The stuff you guys wear. The shirts. The saddles."

  "It's just a celebration of life."

  "Was that really true what you said? Was he really from New Jersey?"

  "Ohio. Yes, that's true. Leonard Slye, a shoe salesman."

  "Well, once you put on the red satin shirt and you have your horse stuffed and everything, there's no turning back," I said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that's it, bub. No more going back to Ohio. You've put on a cowboy hat, and you can never take it off. You're stuck with it."

  The Ranger reached back to pet the dog and looked out the window at casino billboards flashing past.

  "Nobody's ever stuck with anything," he said.

  "Oh, believe me, you can be stuck with some stuff," I said, "I do know a little bit about that."

  "What am I stuck with?" the Ranger said.

  "You're stuck with being the One Ranger, right?" I asked.

  He ran a glove across Bullet's shiny fur and looked at me. "It doesn't matter what you call me, friend, it matters who I am. I'm not stuck with anything."

  We drove silently for a while, until the dog began whimpering and scratching at the windows in back.

  "I think somebody needs privacy," the Ranger said.

  "How can the dog have to pee already? He had a cheeseburger and licked some ice cubes!"

  "We'd better stop up ahead."

  "He's lucky to be alive! Hold it in!" I called behind me.

  "Aren't we all lucky to be alive?!" he said.

  And I swear to you, the dog barked right then.

  I pulled into the next rest area and let the dog wander behind the cinder block buildings, lifting a leg and squirting an antique stream onto dead tumbleweeds.

  "I started off as a trapeze artist, you know, not a cowboy," the Ranger said, clicking his teeth to call the dog away from a station wagon full of wandering hippies.

  "You were a trapeze artist?"

  "Yes, I was, flying through the air with the greatest of ease." "Was your name Leonard?" I asked, "You from Ohio?"

  "No," he said, squinting through the mask, "My real name is Jack. Jack Carlton Moore."

  "Clayton isn't even your real name?"

  "Nope," he said quietly, "Jack is my real name."

  "Where did you get Clayton?"

  "Some producer changed it, back when nobody used their real names."

  "You just let him do it?"

  "At the time I needed a job, so if he wanted to change my name to Irene Dunne I might have done it," he said, drawing a hand over his flat stomach, "Do we have any snacks left?"

  I spun in place, looking through the bug splattered windshield at a dashboard full of empty wrappers.

  "I'm out of Snacks, Jack. We had to feed your new dog, remember?"

  "Hang on, maybe I've got something," he said, walking around the cinder block building toward the dog.

  "Don't eat the dog!" I said, so loudly that I attracted too much attention from the stoners in the station wagon.

  A kid with hooded eyes under a hooded sweatshirt called across a few empty parking spaces. "Dude, is that your Dad?" he asked.

  "No," I said, waving, "Nope. Just a friend."

  "Is he a cowboy?"

  "Uh, yes, he is, I guess."

  "Is that your dog?"

  "Nope. Not my dog. It's his dog."

  "A cowboy dog?"

  "Yeah," I chuckled, "I guess it's a cowboy and a cowboy dog."

  "Whoa!" the kid said, rising out of the vinyl bench, "How'd you guys get that here?"

  Bullet was barking and jumping next to the Ranger, walking his saddled horse out from behind the public bathroom.

  "There was some beef jerky in the saddle bags!" he said, chomping on a long strip of beef.

  "Why do you do this?" I asked.

  "Isn't it beautiful?" the Ranger said, "Look at him! Look at both of them!" The last rays of sunset glinted orange and blue on the saddle and in the eager eyes of the jumping dog, as Twister clopped across the gravel, rested and ready to run.

  "But why? I don't understand what you're doing!"

  He laughed loudly into the empty desert, and scratched behind the horse's ear, as Bullet smelled a discarded ketchup packet and wagged his tail.

  "Is it beautiful, Tom?"

  It was. I don't know if it was the dry air or the bright sun, the blue sky or the soft wind, but for a moment it felt like I loved everything, even the ketchup packet, let alone the animals. He asked if it was beautiful, and before I snapped back that it would be beautiful to get back in the car, or for him to tell me a secret that would give me power over the wind, or it would be beautiful to get a string of jobs in a row and pay for car repairs and so
me dental work I need, before I gave him another useless verbal slap, I thought about his question. Was it beautiful?

  "Yes, it's beautiful, Jack," I said.

  "That's why I do it! It's beautiful!" he said, laughing

  "I want to be me today, and that's beautiful," he said, extending a strip to me, "Jerky?"

  "Do you ever want to go back and be Jack Moore on the flying trapeze?"

  "That's what everybody thinks they want!" he said, "I don't mean they want to be me, I mean everybody seems to just want to be themselves a long time ago."

  "I don't mean nostalgia, or regrets," I said, "I just mean, don't you get tired of the mask?"

  "I volunteered for the mask, Tom. I needed the job, asked for it, and I got it. I can't go back and say I didn't know what it would lead to. The wind blows, and you can make fists and fight it all your life if you want to."

  "What are you supposed to do?" I said.

  "Well, whenever I hear the wind howl, I just sing harmony."

  I chewed on a mouthful of jerky as a few grains of sand blew into my mouth.

  "I'm not fighting it," I said, spitting sand.

  "Fair enough."

  He pulled the reins to one side of the horse and wrapped the canteen strap around the horn, ready to mount up.

  "You took a risk in life, right?" he said, "You jumped out of an airplane, trusting the parachute and trusting the wind. The parachute opened and the wind took you in a different direction than you expected, that's all!" He pulled himself up and into the saddle as Bullet spun around in front of the horse.

  "What if you don't want to get blown around?" I said.

  "Who wants to get blown around? But that's the way it is!" he chuckled, "The wind blows."

  He grabbed the reins and Bullet barked twice. "But, see, that's what I wrestle with!' I asked, grabbing at the horse's head, "Why does the wind blow?"

  He leaned down at the dog and looked into his eyes.

  "BULLET!" he said, and the dog lowered his haunches, ready to fly.

  "GO GIT IT!" he shouted, and the dog launched into the desert in long strides, expanding his muscled ribcage again and again in joyous speed.

  "Tom," he said, spinning Twister in front of me, "You might be a great wrestler, but you can't pin the wind."

  He clicked his tongue and the horse clambered across the asphalt and took off after the racing dog, barking as the lost light turned the distant hills purple and dark. I think he was singing.